Geometric Puzzle Munificence

5 March 2020
Jim Stevenson
#4 Three Little Squares #3 Parallelogram of #2 Sunny Dome3
Went Out to Play1 Eternal Balance2

The three small squares What fraction is The two red arcs are the same
each have an area of 4. shaded? length. What fraction of the
What is the total shaded semicircle is shaded?
area?

#1 Three Squares and a Bonus: #2 Hole in Pie5 Bonus: #1 Tipsy Rectangle6

Slash4

The areas of the squares What’s the total shaded 75% of the purple square is
are given. How long is the area? shaded. What percentage of the
red line? red rectangle is shaded?
Having fallen under the spell of Catriona Shearer’s geometric puzzles again, I thought I would
present the latest group assembled by Ben Orlin, which he dubs “Felt Tip Geometry”,7 along with a
bonus of two more recent ones that caught my fancy as being fine examples of Shearer’s laconic
style. Orlin added his own names to the four he assembled and I added the names to my two, again
ordered from easier to harder.

1
[Link] 12 January 2020
2
[Link] 1 January 2020
3
[Link] 30 January 2020
4
[Link] 4 January 2020
5
[Link] 18 February 2020
6
[Link] 14 February 2020
7
[Link] 12 February 2020

Geometric Puzzle Munificence [Link] 1

#4 Three Little Squares Went Out to Play

The three small squares each have an area of 4. What is the total shaded area?

My Solution
This is definitely easy to solve (Figure 1). The idea
is to rotate 90º the right-most bottom small square and
see that it coincides with the left-most bottom small
square, with the triangle of shaded area in the right-
most square overlaying the empty triangle in the left-
most square.
Thus the total area of the shaded portion of the
large square that is inside the three small squares is two
small squares, or 2·4 = 8.

Figure 1 Problem Solution

#3 Parallelogram of Eternal Balance

What fraction is shaded?

My Solution
This puzzle is a bit more challenging. There may be a purely plane geometry solution, but I had
to resort to analytic geometry.

Geometric Puzzle Munificence [Link] 2

 If the containing square has unit sides, then the
fraction of the square that is in the shaded area A, is
just the area of A. The diagonal of the
parallelogram becomes the base of the a triangle
which is half the desired area, or A/2 (Figure 2).
The base is the same length 1 as the side of the
square, so we only need to find the altitude.
I found the equations for the lines bounding the
desired area and then found their intersection point.
Set the origin (0, 0) at the mid-point of the left
edge of the square. Since the blue line goes from
mid-point to mid-point of the edges of the square,
its equation is y = x. The green line starts at a y-
intercept of ½ and traverses 1 unit downwards until
it crosses the horizontal axis. Therefore, its
equation is y = –½ x + ½ . The intersection yields
3
/2x = 1/2 or x = 1/3. Therefore, y = 1/3 also, which is
Figure 2 Problem Solution
the altitude of the desired triangle. Therefore 1/2A
= 1/2 ·1·1/3 ⇒ A = 1/3.

#2 Sunny Dome

The two red arcs are the same length. What fraction of the semicircle is shaded?

My Solution
This puzzle is even more challenging and probably has a number of solutions. The first thing I
did was slide the separate left-hand red arc over to join the right-hand red arc of the same size (Figure
3 and Figure 4).

Figure 3 Initial Problem Setting Figure 4 Solution Step 1

Now both arcs subtend the same central angle, namely twice the 30º angle or 60º (Figure 5).
Since the blue dashed lines are also the radii of the semi-circle, they, together with the horizontal
black line, form an equilateral triangle (Figure 6). This means the angle at the upper left vertex of the

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triangle is also 60º. The supplementary angle of the angles along the diameter of the semi-circle is
180 º – (60º + 60º) = 60º as well (Figure 6).

Figure 5 Solution Step 2 Figure 6 Solution Step 3

The complement of 30º + 60º is 90º, so the blue dashed line is perpendicular to the slanted black
edge of the shaded region, and the complement of 90º + 60º is 30º (Figure 7). Since the sides of the
blue equilateral triangle are the same as the radii, the two similar green right triangles in Figure 7 are
congruent. Therefore, the original (yellow) shaded area is equal to pie segment shown in Figure 8,
which is a third of the semi-circle.

Figure 7 Solution Step 4 Figure 8 Shaded Area = 1/3 Semi-circle

#1 Three Squares and a Slash

The areas of the squares are given. How long is the red line?

My Solution
This is another puzzle with a somewhat complicated solution. First, inscribe the rotated, area-25-
square in a (yellow) square (Figure 9). Given the statement of the problem, this yellow square is the
same as the 32 area square and so has an edge of length 4√2. Given the 90º rotational symmetries of
the yellow circumscribed square and the area-25-square, the yellow right triangles showing in the
figure are all congruent with each other (Figure 9).

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 Figure 9 Solution Step 1 Figure 10 Final Solution Step

This means the area-18-square lies along the middle of the edge of the yellow square with equal
yellow triangle segments on either side. Since the length of the edge of the yellow (area 32) triangle
is 4√2 and the edge of the 18-area-square is 3√2, the equal lengths on either side must be 1/2(4√2 –
3√2) = 1/2√2 (Figure 10). Therefore the length of the edge of the yellow square from its vertex to the
red line is
3√2 + 1/2√2 = 7/2√2
Given the 90º rotational symmetry of the area-25-square and yellow square, the other edge must
also be 7/2√2 long. Therefore, the red line, being the hypotenuse of an isosceles right triangle must by
√2 times the leg, or √2·7/2√2 = 7.

Bonus: #2 Hole in Pie

What’s the total shaded area?

My Solution
Now back to an easier problem. If we annotate the problem as shown in Figure 11, then we have

Geometric Puzzle Munificence [Link] 5

 R2 = (2r)2 + 122
so
R2/4 = r2 + 62
Therefore the shaded area is
1
/4πR2 – πr2 = π62 = 36π
Neat.

Figure 11 Problem Solution

Bonus: #1 Tipsy Rectangle

75% of the purple square is shaded. What percentage of the red rectangle is shaded?

My Solution
This is rather tricky, and especially opaque at first. Again, there are probably multiple solutions
but this is what I thought of. I first noticed that the square and rectangle had a common diagonal and
that all the vertices had right angles. That made me think of right triangles in a semi-circle with
common hypotenuse equal to the diameter of the semi-circle. So Figure 12 shows the square and
rectangle inscribed in a circle of radius 1. Given the 180º rotational symmetry about the center of the
circle, we only need to consider the relationship of areas in the upper semi-circle. This reduces the
problem to looking at areas of triangles. Having a radius of 1 means the area of the upper triangle in
the purple square is 1 (Figure 13). Therefore, the fraction of area of the rectangle in the square is just

Figure 12 Figure 13 Figure 14

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given by the area of the corresponding upper triangle, which we will call the “rectangle” triangle.
Furthermore, since all the triangles will have base equal to the diameter of the semi-circle, which
is 2, and the areas of the triangles are all ½ base x altitude, all the areas of the triangles reduce to the
values of the altitudes. Therefore saying the ratio of the area of the rectangle inside the square to the
area of the square is 3/4, is equivalent to saying the altitude of the “rectangle” triangle is 3/4 (Figure
13).
So now we want to find the full area of the rectangle, or actually the one half of the area in the
upper triangle (Figure 14), or equivalently the altitude h of this triangle. Then the ratio of the area of
the rectangle in the square to the area of the rectangle will be 3/4 / h.
This is where things
start to get complicated and
we resort to trigonometry.
Let θ be the angle shown in
Figure 15. Since the purple
square produces 45º right
triangles, the blue 3/4
altitude for the “rectangle”
triangle is also 3/4 from the
right-hand endpoint of the
diameter, and so 5/4 from
the left-hand endpoint of
the diameter. Therefore,
tan θ = 3/5. Now draw the Figure 15 Figure 16
(black) radius to the top of
the altitude h (Figure 16). This defines the central angle for θ and therefore is equal to 2θ. We
introduce the variable x for the distance to the altitude h. Then tan 2θ = h/x and 1 = x2 + h2.
Using the double angle trigonometry identity for the tangent, we have
2 tan θ h 2 ⋅ 53
tan 2θ = ⇒ =
1 − tan 2 θ x 1 − 259
Therefore, x = 8/15h, and so
1 = (8/15)2 h2 + h2
Thus
h = 15/17
and so
ratio of areas = 3/4 / h = 17/20

© 2020 James Stevenson

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